Tuesday, 28 June 2016

...You had
better be prepared to experience more than you bargained for. Especially if the
woods in question are in the vicinity of the Kent village of Pluckley.
Properly known as Dering Woods, this forest is more commonly known as the
Screaming Woods – and for very good reason.

The area
itself is situated just south of England’s (arguably) most haunted village –
Pluckley – where it seems almost every building and piece of land has its own
ghost story to tell. Pinnock Bridge has its Gypsy or Watercress Woman who is
supposed to have set herself on fire from a combination of the pipe she was
smoking and the gin she was drinking at the same time. She wafts around as a
misty figure.

The Elvey
Farm has a haunted dairy where an 18th century farmer – Edward Brett
– fatally shot himself. He is still heard, muttering ‘I will do it.’

A black
silhouette of a miller haunts the site of an old windmill, while a red lady
walks her small white dog around the churchyard and a white lady wanders around
inside the same church. The locals at the time of her death must have really
feared her. She was buried inside not one, but seven coffins AND an oak sarcophagus. She’s still pacing around there though!

An
unfortunate love affair led to the suicide (by poisoning) of the Lady of Rose
Court, and a poor man who fell into a clay pit still screams in agony. A
schoolmaster who hanged himself is still apparently trapped at the site of his
demise.

Now,
after experiencing all that, you could well be forgiven for deciding to retire
to the local hostelry (the Black Horse Inn). Surely here you could kick back
and relax over a pint of foaming ale or a glass of comforting wine? Not a bit
of it! After the phantom coach and horses have thundered by outside, expect things
to start flying around you as the resident poltergeist gets to work.

But I
digress. Back to the woods.

In the 18th
century, a highwayman called Robert du Bois was tracked down and run through
with a sword while he hid in a tree in these very woods. Another version states
that he was dragged to the woods before being lynched. Either way, his are the
screams which give the woods their name - along with a couple of other
unfortunates, such as the army colonel who hanged himself and still can be seen
dangling from his tree, and the ghostly soldier who wanders the woodland paths.
Others who have simply lost their way - and never found it again - add their desperate
voices to the cacophony from beyond the grave.

Sceptics
might say it’s just foxes. Everyone knows foxes can make a terrible racket. As
if hell itself had opened and let the screams of the damned escape.

But those
of us who know about such things, don’t need any such explanations.

Friday, 17 June 2016

J.G. Faherty is one of my favourite modern horror authors, so when I heard about his latest - The Changeling - I had to learn more. Today, he tells us how this story developed - and how you can win a copy:

A
few years ago, I came across some articles about how the U.S. military was
experimenting with lightning as a potential weapon. At the time, I had some
notes in one of my several notebooks of ideas about a young girl who develops
superpowers but can’t control them. I’d put the concept aside because it seemed
to common – another superhero story? Who needs that?

But
the idea about lightning appearing out of nowhere to destroy things stayed with
me, and I started adding to my notes. Lightning. Military weapons. What goes
wrong?

Eventually,
I received that Aha! moment all writers love. “What if the girl isn’t a
superhero? What if the powers she has are hurting her, but she’s forced to use
them anyhow?”

From
there, the rest of the book came to me in a nice, tidy bundle. Girl. Struck by
lightning. She survives, but starts to develop these weird abilities. Then she
discovers it was part of a military experiment, and now they’re after her to
figure out what happened, why she can do these crazy things. And after some
thought, I decided that she shouldn’t have common superpowers. No super
strength, no lightning bolts from her fingers or lasers from her eyes, she
can’t fly. Instead, I decided to give her abilities that would be hard to
understand, and difficult to master.

But
every book needs a subplot, and it needs to resonate with the readers
emotionally. In most superhero stories—comics, movies, books—these fall into 3
basic categories: romance, personal relationship with the villain, and the idea
of responsibility. Spider-Man had MaryJane, The Lizard/Doctor Connors, and his
Uncle Ben. Professor X has Magneto and his dedication to bridging the gap
between mutants and normal folk. And so on.

And
therein lies a problem. When you’re writing a story, you want to work with what
the readers like to see/read about, but you don’t want to just do more of the
same old thing. You want to break new ground. Be original.

That’s
when it came to me: this wasn’t a superhero book. My character wasn’t going to
become the next Wonder Woman or Supergirl or Jean Gray. She just wants to be a
normal teenager, to get her life back from the people who ruined it.

So
I took some advice from an old mentor – When you’re writing a book, take your
first idea and turn it upside down and inside out – and reworked my story in a
way that allowed me to be original while still delivering the basic
expectations of the reader. A love story? Yes, but not a traditional one. Relationship
with the villain? Yes, and it leads to considerable problems. Responsibility?
Yes. As a teenager, my heroine not only has to be responsible, she has to first
figure out how to be responsible,
something that up until now only meant finishing her homework, not breaking
curfew, and getting her chores done. She’s thrown into the pool and has to
learn how to swim, because the lives of her family depend on it. And she makes
mistakes. Big ones.

Over
a period of two years, I wrote the book, in between other projects. The
original title was Lightning from a Clear Sky, but during the editing process
it became The Changeling, a nod to the main character who undergoes so many
mental, physical, and supernatural changes. It also evolved from the before-mentioned
super hero story to a YA science fiction thriller. An experiment of sorts for
me; I’d written YA before –horror, dark fantasy – but never sci-fi.

And
now I’ve embarked on a second experiment with that book. Rather than submit to
traditional publishers or small press, I’ve set up a Kindle Scout promotion.
For those of you not familiar with this, it’s part of Amazon’s publishing arm.
For 30 days, readers get to peruse an excerpt of the book and vote for whether
or not they’d like to see it published so they can read the whole thing. At the
end of the 30 days, Amazon’s editing team reviews the votes, reads the books,
and decides which ones that month get publishing contracts.

What’s
the prize for the readers who voted for it? They get a free Kindle copy of the
book.

You
can read the excerpt here: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/3SNA1TEAOMD0F
and vote if you like it. There are other great books there as well – horror,
sci-fi, mysteries, thrillers; adult and YA. You can nominate as many as you
want, although only 2-3 per week. And Amazon tracks if you actually read the
excerpt, just so writers don’t screw around with the system.

Needless
to say, it’s been a nail biting experience. I’m only 2 weeks in, so I’ve got a
ways to go before I find anything out. But if it gets a contract, The
Changeling will surely be a project where fiction and fact came together like
peanut butter and chocolate for me!